How good is a Domain name having an hyphen ?

[skyvia]

I would like to know how good is a domain name having an hyphen in it compared to the domain which doesn't have any ?

will it affect anyway with the search engine display/traffic or seo ?

some inputs would be highly appreciated

[SiberForum]

Taking the advantage of the opportunity, I'd like to inform you that the majority of webmasters prefer to register domains without any hyphens.

[reliabox-james]

It all depends on the niche, how you plan on marketing etc. As far as SEO goes, most people say that having a hypen is not as good as having a domain without a hyphen. That being said, if credit-cards . com was available I would certainly buy it!

[SiberForum]

Well, hyphens can be reasonable if you need to register domain you want, but it is not available.. so, hyphenates domains can be useful.

[NerdZHost]

I try very hard not to use hyphens in a domain name, its better to us letters, numbers, words either long formed or short formed etc.

[ardensmith]

This is also a long disputed discussion in the search marketing community. Technically hyphens are recognized as a separator (or space), so they should be used in instances where search engines may not correctly discriminate your keywords. For example, expertsexchange.com - is that experts-exchange or expert-sex-change? In all other instances hyphens are unneccessary, as search engines will correctly parse out the keywords. Not that that matters though, as Google largely ignores the content of your domain name. Therefore you should focus on the branding aspect of your name - ie. stick with one that is short, simple, and easy to remember. MSN currently does recognize keywords in domain names, and seems to give preference accordingly. Read our article on Keywords in Domain Name for details.
Word of Mouth Marketing

There is one undisputed argument for non-hyphenated domains. And that is when you are marketing your domain name by word of mouth. It is much easier to tell someone to go to "guru of search dot com" than it is to try and get them to remember "guru hyphen of hyphen search dot com" Chances are they will forget the hyphens, insert them in the wrong place, or not know what a hyphen is to begin with. To avoid this confusion, it is recommended to either begin with the non-hyphenated domain, or have the hyphenated domain redirect to your non-hyphenated domain. That being said, if you market your non-hyphenated domain and people store links to it, your hyphenated domain will lose out on that link popularity.
The Myth of "Hyphen Dropoffs"

Many people have reported that they are seeing drop-offs in rankings of their hyphenated domains in Google SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). Upon further inspection, however, the drop-offs are also being realized by hyphenated domains. The bottom line is that Google is constantly updating their search algorithms, so your page rankings will vary day to day, and often pages will be dropped from the index. But this has nothing to do with hyphens. Just imagine the risk Google, or any SE for that matter, would run if they penalized hyphenated domain names that ended up being high quality sites. A simple, crude filter such as this has nothing to do with distinguishing quality content - and the complex Google algorithms have been refined to a development point that is far beyond this.

Thanks

Toronto immigration lawyers

[SiberForum]

So, what did you decide OP? To register hyphenated or non-hyphenated domain?

[whmanaged]

It depends, hypen is good but then again if your going to open a company that someone has the full domain you'll be screwed.

[uthamaputiran]

Personally, I think they don't look professional. They are hard to remember. However, some domain names require hyphens in the name so their exact meaning can be communicated. But until necessary, I won't recommend using it in your domain name. I have registered the Domain name without Hypens at Whoisxy.com

[DesignerMike]

I had a client with a company called rockets galore. His website name was Rockets-Galore.com and he had a bunch of rocket traffic from searches on Google and Yahoo. While designing for him, we found RocketsGalore.com available. Registered it and the traffic spiked by 25% or more. Not sure if hyphens are bad for SEO, but they aren't my first choice since then.